Yi-Qiang (Eric) Cheng

Biochemistry, Genetic Engineering and Functional Genomics
Adjunct Professor
Biochemistry
PhD, Michigan State University, 1999
(414) 229-4379
e-mail: ycheng@uwm.edu
Cheng Web Page
Selected Publications

Microorganisms, notably actinomycetes and filamentous fungi, are prolific producers of natural products, many of which have been used as antibiotics, anticancer drugs, immunosuppressant agents, or other types of medicines. Metabolic engineering of natural product biosynthetic pathways to produce novel chemical entities offers new momentum for drug discovery and development. We strive to develop new methods and platforms for the discovery and engineering of pharmaceutically relevant microbial natural products as drugs or drug leads.

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Three specific areas of research are as follows:

1.)Cloning and characterization of the biosynthetic gene clusters of promising natural products and engineering of their metabolic pathways for novel products with improved therapeutic properties. Current objects are valinomycin (antiviral), FK228 (depsipeptide; antitumor) and A54556 factors (acyldepsipeptides; antibacterial).

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2.)Microbial biodiversity in the Great Lakes and natural product discovery from freshwater microorganisms.
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3)Bio-/Chem-informatics-guided natural product discovery from genome-sequenced microorganisms.

Key words: valinomycin, FK228, A54556, depsipeptide, natural product biosynthesis, gene cluster cloning and characterization, metabolic pathway engineering, heterologous expression, natural product drug discovery and development.